Sherdog’s 2011 Submission of the Year

Horsepower and technique came together in award-winning fashion
for Frank Mir at UFC 140. | Photo: Sherdog

When Frank
Mir rematched Antonio
Rodrigo Nogueira at UFC
140, the fact alone that he got his hand raised didn’t shock
anybody. After Mir’s December 2008 blowout of Nogueira, in which he
became the first fighter in MMA history to stop the battle-hardened
Brazilian, Mir deserved his status as a two-to-five favorite.

What nobody was banking on was that Mir’s luggage out of Toronto
would include the legendary Nogueira’s right arm, taken violently
in the first round, a feat which has earned him Sherdog.com’s 2011
“Submission of the Year.”

Sherdog.com

Mir had to battle back
from major adversity.

From the fight’s outset, it appeared to be a different sort of bout
than their previous encounter. Nogueira pressed forward from the
opening bell and got Mir’s back against the cage. It seemed like
Nogueira was trying to control Mir and then explode with punches,
much in the same fashion that the larger, more powerful Shane
Carwin did in his bout with Mir.

Halfway through the first frame, a Nogueira right cross cracked Mir
above the ear, temporarily dissolving his legs. It looked like
Nogueira was about to seal the deal on one of the most impressive
single-year comebacks in MMA history and earn another win that
would fortify his legacy as a heavyweight icon. All five of Mir’s
career losses had been by similar stoppages, and there was little
reason to think he would make any kind of comeback.

Mir hit the mat looking for a desperate takedown. The Brazilian
pounded away, nearing a stoppage, but when his former tormentor
reached deep for Nogueira’s leg, “Big Nog” countered with an arm-in
guillotine.

Mir, with whatever wits he had left, kept his neck safe and stopped
Nogueira’s attempt to pass into full mount by gaining half-guard
for a moment. When Nogueira tried to change course and roll into an
anaconda choke, Mir came through on top, stopped Nogueira from
locking his choking arm and cleared out to side-control.

Nogueira tried to show off some defensive wrestling by sitting out
from the bottom, potentially escaping to back control. When
Nogueira reached through to control Mir’s upper body and take the
back, Mir managed to get nearside wrist control on his right arm
and stop the advances. At this point, most would have been content
with having escaped disaster and tried to stall out. It would have
seemed that Mir, a fighter with little experience in escaping
in-fight adversity, might be content to be conservative on top
after such a brush with blowing it.

Nope. Even with a legendary grappler trying to scale his back, Mir
was thinking offense. As soon as the Sin City resident got
Nogueira’s wrist and then grabbed his own, he was gearing into
fifth. Mir kicked back into side-control and nearly stepped clean
over Nogueira’s head with the kimura, which would have ended the
bout in mere seconds. Instead, “Minotauro” rolled through, trying
to escape. Unfortunately for him, Frank Mir isn’t just a great
grappler; he’s a great, 260-pound-plus grappler.

Then it happened, like a subliminal, single-frame message embedded
in a TV commercial. It changed, just for a second. Did you see
that? What happened? His arm, did you see it? Did it...?

Oh yes, it did. In the moments after the submission, there were
questions all over the Air Canada Centre as to whether or not
Nogueira’s arm had just been splintered by Mir. That notion seemed
strengthened when the Brazilian stayed down, writhing in pain on
the mat. However, replay after replay after replay confirmed the
gruesome reality. As Joe Rogan did his best impression of Andrew
Dice Clay’s emphatic “Oh!” with each rewind, the Torontonian crowd
winced and grimaced in unison.

“Mr. Nogueira suffered a complex fracture to his humerus. The
fracture began in the middle of the bone and extended to the elbow
region,” wrote Dr. Tom R. Hackett, Nogueira’s orthopedic surgeon,
on Nogueira’s official website on Dec. 18, following surgery.
“Unfortunately, the radial nerve [one of the main nerves lending a
feeling of power to the hands] was damaged. Before the operation,
he had very little strength in his hand and no strength whatsoever
in his thumb.”

Nogueira’s nerve had to be moved away from the broken bone, and his
arm was repaired with 16 screws and a plate.

Minotauro didn’t get to enjoy a UFC 140 after-party, spending the
night in local hospital after being stretchered out of the Octagon.
However, Mir’s post-fight celebrations were not exactly full of
extravagant revelry. Instead, a low-key, friends-and-family affair
gathered in the Mir suite. Catering, so to speak, was provided by
Alexandro’s Take-Out, a tiny gyro shack beside the UFC’s host hotel
that serves as the late-night eats for most associated with UFC
events in Toronto.

Sherdog.com

Nogueira couldn't roll out of
Mir's kimura.

The victorious Mir held court over the room of a dozen-and-a-half
training partners, friends and family, lying on the floor in sweats
with a chalice of Stella Artois, laughing and joking. Pajama-clad
children scurried about the room as the former UFC heavyweight
champ quietly iced his left temple, attempting to erase the
still-lingering impact of Nogueira’s right cross.

As Mir regaled the room, discussing his penchant for sobbing at
children’s movies, an iPhone began circulating from hand-to-hand.
The UFC’s official Twitter account had posted an X-ray picture of
Nogueira’s broken humerus. When the phone made its way to the
reclined Mir, he sat up, squinting at the phone quietly for a
moment. His gruesome handiwork
seemed to surprise even him.

“That’s the great thing about submissions. You build up your
strength and your power in the gym, but it’s like having a lever,”
Mir told Sherdog.com later that night. “You want to get the lever
in the right spot and use proper technique, and then, when it’s in
the right spot, you want to jump up and down on it to get as much
force as you can into it. It’s a good combination of both strength
and technique, so when I grabbed it and started cranking, it just
crushed, like twisting a bag of potato chips.”

It’s a full-body, visceral image Mir that related, one that
significantly intensifies subsequent viewings. But the fight’s
secondary story was just as important for Mir. His career had been
defined by the fact that he had shown an inability to recover from
getting hurt, to conquer adversity.

“It showcased a few things people always draw into question, my
ability to want to keep on pushing in a fight when it’s going bad.
His warm-up and mindset was much better than mine. When I got in
there, it was weird. I was looking around. I just did not feel
activated, I didn’t feel sharp,” Mir recalled.

That extra oomph, that intriguing little twist, helps cement the
status of that kimura as 2011’s finest. Really, 2011’s “Submission
of the Year” competition was a two-dog race, with Mir’s kimura on
Nogueira sharing lanes with MMA cult hero Chan Sung
Jung’s first-in-UFC-history twister submission on Leonard
Garcia in March. Side-by-side, a double wristlock seems
technically and sensationally inferior to the twister, which back
in days of catch-as-catch-can wrestling lore was known as “the
guillotine,” and was one of the most treacherous holds any hooker
could tie their foe up in. This is where context is so
important.

Sherdog.com

Mir left Toronto with Nogueira's arm.

“The Korean Zombie” deserves all due praise for bringing Eddie
Bravo’s signature submission to the Octagon. However, tapping out
the questionably-employed Garcia doesn't quite stack up with
tapping out MMA’s most celebrated heavyweight submission artist.
It’s not that Mir beat Nogueira, just as it wasn’t in their first
meeting. What made Mir’s submission special was that in addition to
being the first man to knock out Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, he is
now the first man to tap him out in MMA competition, too.

And, while gruesome injury doesn’t necessarily warrant bonus
points, there is something poetic about the grisly finish. If there
is a defining characteristic of Frank Mir, it is what UFC
matchmaker Joe Silva refers to as “when technique meets
horsepower.” It’s that jaw-dropping fusion that made Pete
Williams scream, Tim Sylvia’s
arm snap and Cheick
Kongo’s consciousness disappear. Mir’s destroying Nogueira’s
arm was a reminder that submissions are not necessarily the
pacifist’s route in MMA, but bona fide weapons.

Given the choice between getting knocked out by Mir or joint-locked
by the former UFC champion, an ever-increasing amount of MMA folks
would likely opt for the former.

“That aspect of being able to devastatingly finish people, that’s
something to be fearful of,” Mir said. “Trust me, the guys who got
knocked out tonight, they’re at the after-party right now. People
that are going to the hospital that are having rods put in their
arm and get things casted up? Not so much.”

And that's Frank Mir’s A-game: awful and awesome, in their purest
senses, not to mention absolutely award-winning.